Making a Teacup Candle

I found a cute teacup at the thrift store today and thought it would make a pretty container candle. I used EL SOY Millennium blend for containers, which is a combination of soy and other natural waxes.

To hold the wick in place, I placed a bit of glue on the wick tab with a glue gun. I also used a popsicle stick to hold it straight at the top. After it cracks, it sort of works as a clamp. You could also attempt to make a neat hole in the center, but this works.

This soft wax has a low melting point of 125 F(52C), so it really doesn’t need to be heated above 150F(65C). I usually use a coffee can placed into a pot of water as a double boiler because it works and I have tons of them.

Once it melted, I added one chip of hunter green dye. It’s best to let your candle wax cool down even further before adding any fragrance because otherwise it may evaporate. Some sort of minty scent would have matched green, but I only had vanilla.

Creating teacup candles is a nice way to display pretty cups that are just gathering dust. It would also be a perfect project for recycling chipped teacups that are no good for sipping tea.

As if Diwali weren’t colorful and fun enough, The Festival of Lights: A Lift-the-flap Diwali Celebration by Namita Moolani Mehra, illustrated by Darshika Varm, makes it even more fun to read about with flaps and things to lift and pull to see more information or details in the illustrations.

The book is a story about a family getting ready for Diwali and what happens on the different days of the five-day celebration. There’s cleaning, shopping, crafting, food preparation and getting the home altar ready for the big day.

It covers decorating the outside of the house with rangoli, diyas and lanterns, buying sweets to share with family and friends, the sights and scents of the mandir (home temple), getting dressed up in new fancy clothes, the story of Diwali and celebrations with relatives.

Flaps (there are more than 140 in all) give you vocabulary words for different foods and definitions, as well as fun things like what’s inside the shopping basket or where the cat is hanging out. They also help illuminate the story of Diwali, which is the triumph of good over evil as Lord Ram defeated the demon Ravana to save his wife, Sita.

This pretty and colorful book helps kids understand what Diwali is and how it is celebrated, regardless of whether they practice it at home. This would be a nice book to keep in a classroom (it’s rated for kids ages 3-7) or to have at home to teach kids about Diwali even if it’s not something you celebrate. Where I live there are a lot of people from India so we are probably exposed to Diwali more than some other regions of America, but it’s a nice holiday to know about wherever you live.

Combine with the book Diwali and check out some fun lantern crafts and printables for kids to round out your experience.

About the book: 24 pages, hardcover, published 2025 by Wide Eyed Editions. Suggested retail prices $22.99.

Have you read?